Grounding Experiences

It's been a perfect 70-80 degrees outside, the grass is green, and the flowers are in full blooom.  The trees and the light wind create a shadey breeze with a little bit of sunshine peeking through the leaves in the front yard.  The last couple months my calmest moments have been drinking coffee on the front porch while enjoying the scenery that God has given me.

Source of Pic

We need these grounding experiences each day to help us become aware of our current feelings about important matters in our life and to have clarity of mind when making significant decisions throughout the day.  Moments like these brings the pulse rate down so the body can rest and haults the racing thoughts so the mind can be at ease.

In Counseling Today I read an article on how counselors can help others work through difficult times. The author said to "Use grounding techniques to help clients stabilize. For example, Webber says, ask clients to name five non-distressing objects they can see, five non-distressing objects they can hear and five non-distressing objects they can touch. Integrate this exercise with deep breathing" (Lynne Shallcross 2010).  The article also suggests that one should be in the practice of performing these exercisis daily not just when there is a crisis situation as to keep the individual grounded in reality (Counseling Today).

For me on some days it's the front porch, but other days it's working in the yard (some call this "dirt therapy").  Find time in your day that you can take in a similar moment.  Think about what you enjoy seeing, touching, or listening to and take a short time out of your day to become grounded.

Tony Nichols

I enjoy helping others experience joy and peace in their life!
     

Looking for a Counseling Career?

I decided to gather some information about the Human Services field and make a blog for those that are trying to make career decisions.  It can be extremely confusing when you don't know where to look for the right information. Some of this information is general, but most only pertains to the state of Illinios as each state incorporates different standards.    

If you are just graduating high school, the first step is finding an undergrad program that includes a psychology degree or a degree in the human services field.  You will want to complete the degree, or at least your last two semesters, with a 3.0 GPA.  After completing a bachelors degree, search for a masters program that meets the requirements of the field that you desire to work in.

**Before you drop $20,000-$50,000 on a degree, make sure it will take you into the field you want to work in the most and for the longest period of time.  A psychology degree is very broad and can open up opportunities in a vareity of human services fields for you.  Seek out your guidance counselor to take a career test or search for a local career counselor to explore what drives you to be successful.  You also need to consider what kind of lifestyle you want to live.  Can you afford to be a therapist? Look up websites: www.payscale.com or Indeed Salary for LCPC to get an idea of a professional counselor's salary.

There are several fields within human services to choose from:

If you want to provide individual, family, and group counseling, a Clinical Mental Health Counseling masters degree would be best.  Look for a degree with at least CACREP standards.  Though, it's best to look at your states requirements.  I know that a counseling student in Indiana will need to take an internship with 1000 hours whereas other states, such as Texas, only require 300 internship hours. Illinois requires a graduate student in counseling to take classes in 13 differenent competencies, including a practicum or internship, and the degree must be at least 48 credit hours.  In Illinois, CACREP is the preferred accreditation, but it is not yet the official state standard. A CACREP degree requires 700 internship hours.  There are ten Universities in Illinois that have a CACREP accreditation for Clincial Mental Health Counseling: click here for the ten Illinios Universities.  The University I graduated from in 2015 is now one of those ten: LCU Counseling webpage. 

If you want to provide individual and group counseling for those with substance abuse disorders, then a Masters degree in Addictions Counseling would be your choice.  Keep in mind, that a social worker with a LSW and a counselor with a LPC can also work with substance abuse clients.  The University of Illinois has a top rated Masters in Social Work.  Check it out: UofI MSW Program.

If you primarily want to focus on counseling couples and families then a degree in Marriage and Family Therapy would suit you best.

Often times when people have setbacks, whether it's substance abuse or physical ailments, people will need a counselor to help them recover.  If this is the population you want to work with then a Rehabilitation Counseling degree would be best for you.  Southern Illinios University- Carbondale has one of the best programs in the country: http://ehs.siu.edu/rehab/

The above positions have their own licensure standards and exams, below are links about exams and licensure in Clinical Mental Health Counseling (LPC) in Illinois.

Professional Counselor in the state of Illinois                            NCE and NCMHCE Test-Prep

Professional Counselor Info                                                       National Counselor Exam official site

After attaining a masters degree, you will want to take the National Counselors Exam to finally apply for a License in Professional Counseling.  After two years of counseling experience under the supervision of a LCPC, then you can take the National Clinical Mental Health Counselor Exam (NCMHCE).  A LCPC license will allow you to meet the Illinois standard to supervise other counselors and to work in your own private practice.  A LCPC licensure application with state qualifications is here.

Many organizations, especially those that receive funding from the state, will want their therapists to be a Qualified Mental Health Professional.  The standard is explained in Section 132.  Meeting this standard will open a lot more opportunities for you and your future.

I hope this helps you find the career that will provide the most fulfilling experiences in your life.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Tony Nichols

I enjoy helping others experience hope and joy in their life!

Best Way to Evoke Change in Others: Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a counseling style used to help a client uncover his or her ambivalence toward maladaptive behaviors and to evoke change.

This evidence based interviewing style reminds me of a popular philosophical method that Francis Schaeffer used, "taking the roof off." When you remove the roof off of the house, Shaeffer states that, "each man must stand naked and wounded before the truth of what is."  The reality of one's worldview that which someone lives comes flooding in.  Therefore, the roof must be carefully deconstructed so the house can be reconstructed.  Apply that same concept to behavioral change and you have the crux of Motivational Interviewing.

Initiators of MI in the 80's, Miller and Rollnick (2013), in their book entitled Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, stated, "If someone else voices an argument for change, people are likely to respond by expressing a counter-change argument from the other side of their ambivalence.  By continuing to express the arguments against change, people can literally talk themselves out of changing.  Similarly, people can talk themselves into change by continuing to voice prochange arguments" (See source here).

Unless there is a direct intent to harm self or others, it is up to the client to make his own life choices (you can't make someone else's choices for them).  What I love about motivational interviewing is that the counselor explores with the client and helps him expose his own destructive path and the consequences of that path.  Then the counselor can process with the client how to hold himself accountable by using his own values, goals, strengths, and morals.  Typically, people have the resources from within to make better decisions; it's up to the counselor to help pull these out.  If this happends, then the client can take ownership and build confidence in changing her behavior.

As the client uncovers his own values, he may see that drinking excessive amounts of alcohol at work or other maladaptive behaviors might cause his life to come flooding in on him (losing his job, income, house, hobbies, license, ability to support his family, prison, etc.).  Seeing this new reality or truth will help motivate the client to change.

A research journal article reported that MI helps clients change their behavior and that it trumps traditional advice giving in approximately 80% of the cases (See full study here). 

Tony Nichols

 --I find joy in helping other's experience hope and peace in their life. 

Looking for a Satisfying Career?

Are you thinking about changing careers or jobs?  There are many career paths that a person can choose after high school.  There are also several transition points a person can experience in life that will take him from one career to another.  Happenstance, unplanned connections with people or events, will be a reason why a person will move from one job or career to another.  One of the major competencies in counseling is Career Counseling.  An interesting career theory that stuck out to me through my research was Krumboltz's Happenstance Learning Theory:


Which roads lead to your dream job?

"(1) The goal of career counseling is to help clients learn to take actions to achieve more satisfying career and personal lives—not to make a single career decision. 

(2) Assessments are used to stimulate learning, not to match personal characteristics with occupational characteristics. 

(3) Clients learn to engage in exploratory actions as a way of generating beneficial unplanned events. 

(4) The success of counseling is assessed by what the client accomplishes in the real world outside the counseling session." Link to research article

Longevity, stability, growing roots, etc. are principles that many people hold in high regard (for many good reasons) but those traditional practices wont necessarily bring personal satisfaction to everyone.  Continuing to learn about life, seeking new interests, and growing relationships with others can bring many new career or job opportunities.  Some will even happen upon you by meeting those new people or exploring those new adventures.

           

A Forbes article reported that The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that people change jobs every 4.4 years.  A 2012 survey by Net Impact uncovered that 88% of employees considered "positive culture" important or essential to their dream job, and 86% reported that there dream job must be "interesting" as well.  The Forbes article also expressed that "Job -hopping helps workers reach both goals, because it means trying out a variety of roles and workplaces while learning new skills along the way."Forbes Article

Finding a new job or career doesn't have to just include signing up for indeed.com or looking through the newspaper.  Seek out a career counselor or coach, take a career assessment to create more self-awareness, learn new skills, and get involved in different activities.  You might just happen to find your dream job!

     

Tony Nichols

 --I find joy in helping other's experience hope and peace in their life. 

I'm Done! But, still stretching!

I just completed my last project and class last night!!!  I feel a lot of weight lifted off of my shoulders now that this counseling degree is finished.  I didn't feel this way after my bachelor's degree because I was already enrolled in graduate school and I didn't experience relief after the M.Div. because I was still taking courses for the counseling degree.  I defintely didn't feel this way after high school because I was still like a disoriented looking chicken cracking out of the egg shell.  But, at the age of 34, it's like I am finally an adult now and I can move on with life in the real world.  But my desire to grow is still strong.  Experiencing an achievement or goal doesn't mean as much if I can't defend it or continue to live out that success. Leadership guru, John Maxwell, said, “Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.”     
     
My last course was in Test and Measures and my class had to take a battery of tests to gain the experience of administering, scoring, and interpreting tests so that we can make better assessments when we are in a therapist position.  One of the common patterns that surfaced in my tests was anxiety.  This has been a tough year with some experiences positive and some negative, but all causing stress (a lot of material for stretching) with moving into a new home, having an adorable healthy baby boy, working an internship and a full-time job (days and nights), troubles with our rental in Kansas, and finding time to spend with family and friends.  Even though I have a great wife and awesome/squirly boys at home, raising a family brings its own kind of stress as well.

I look forward to having a more balanced life; though, I haven't experienced what that's like without being enrolled in class since I was four (save for a year in-between HS and college).  Am I going to fill the void with something else and continue to manage a high level of stress/anxiety or am I going to relax for a period of time?  What is life like without having deadlines to complete projects, papers, and other assignments alongside all the other demands/opportunities in life?
I enjoy the product of what God has blessed me with; can't wait to see what else is going to stretch me!

Success is best achieved in community.  Thank you- Family, friends, professors, and colleagues that have spotted me on some of these life stretches!  Honorable mention- My wife, Shanda!    

Tony Nichols

 --I find joy in helping other's experience hope and peace in their life. 

Solution Focused

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"A tourist driving through rural Ireland got lost on the small roads.  Frustrated, he eventually stopped and asked a farmer how he could get back on the main road to Cork City.  'Ah,' said the farmer, 'If I was going to Cork, I wouldn't start from here.  I would start from somewhere else.'*  This Irish joke can illustrate how unhelpful people can be when we don't meet people where they are at in life.  In the human services field, it's important to meet people where they are at, not where we think they should be.

If the client feels that the counselor is attempting to put himself in her shoes by meeting her where she is at then she will begin to develop trust; this can foster a strong therapeutic alliance. Developing that alliance is extremely important when giving counsel to someone that might be searching for a better life but doesn't know where or who to turn to.  There are times like these when solution focused therapy proves to be the best method to help others navigate toward the right road for them.  Whenever I have been lost in an unfamiliar place and my wife finally demands me to go into a gas station to ask for directions, the attendant has never asked me, "Well, how did you get lost?"  The attendant usually shares with me how to get us on the right road so that we can end up at our desired destination; this is how solution focused therapy works.

Source to pic

Solution Focused Therapy includes a few different helpful techniques including: 1. Establishing goals; perhaps through asking the miracle question (If you were to wake up today and your life or triggering situation be the way you want it, what would be different?); 2. Finding exceptions to one's problems and then working on how to experience those exceptional moments more often so the goal can be met (I noticed that you don't have as much anxiety, you feel better, and your more productive when you go for a walk after work, I wonder how you can fit that in more?).  3.  Monitoring progress or effectiveness through scaling questions (On a scale of one to ten...).

If someone has experienced major trauma they will need to go back and examine their trauma narrative, but for clients that need to move forward, Solution Focused Therapy is extremely effective and helpful getting someone headed in the right direction.        


*Becoming a Solution Detective: Identifying your Client's Strengths in Practical Brief Therapy. The Haworth Clinical Practice Press. Binghamton, NY.  John Sharry, Brendan Madden and Melissa Darmondy 2003.  

Just One Page

Approximately ten years ago I went to a conference in Indianapolis where the speaker, Fred Craddock, spoke on the principle of writing "one page."  I remember sitting in that cushioned but uncomfortable chair in a crowded room at that session thinking of the value of writing "one page" stories.  With the completion of school coming in a few weeks that will add a little extra time, I thought that this was the best time as ever to start recording these one pagers.  

Most of the time when a memorable story or principle is experienced or surfaces in one's life it can be a teachable moment.  Craddock expressed the importance of recording these moments in just "one page" in order to recall them later.  These moments can be recalled for teaching, preaching, counseling, writing or any other instructional value to illustrate a point.  Of course, ethical standards and respect toward others involved in the story or example should be considered when appropriate.

Source to Pic of Dr. Fred Craddock

In the last ten years I have failed to consistently record these "one page" stories or principles primarily because I don't hold to a specific plan or system of doing so.  I have now decided to plan on using this blog as my "one page" to collect illustrative stories, resources, and other useful material that I might find insightful to recall later for instructional purposes.  The great thing about collecting stories and other material is that the same illustration can be used with a variety of clients, parishioners, or readers to emphasize a multitude of principles.  Craddock said, "A different condition calls for a reshaping of the story that will address appropriately the new condition; you have to put the grease where the squeak is."

I have been writing these blogs sporadically the last couple years, but my goal is to write a blog each week.  Feel free to read, ignore, or interact at your leisure.